Cane of the Week, 7/5/09: Behold!, Part II

To those of you who read my previous post, welcome back! As promised, here are the steps I used to construct my Behold! cane.

1. To make my Skinner blend, I roll out sheets on the thickest setting of my Atlas pasta machine (#1). These sheets are approximately 4”x6”/ 10.6x15.24cm in size. I will use a smaller amount of the blue clay in my blend, as you can see in the next photo.

2. I cut, stack, and arrange my 3 colors to look like this. My Skinner blend will be made from this slab, which is approximately ¼”/6.35mm in thickness.

3. I fold the clay slab in half, and flatten it out so it will fit through my pasta machine more easily. I then proceed to make the blend.

4. Here is my Skinner blend after approximately 20 passes through the pasta machine.

5. After trimming the ends, I roll up the Skinner blend across the colors to form a log shape. The log is compressed and reshaped to make a square block or ‘plug’.

6. Here the block has been flattened and stretched so I can fit it through the pasta machine on the #1 setting.

7. This is what the sheet looks like after it has gone through the pasta machine. I divide this strip into 1”/2.5cm segments, then stack the segments to make a block shape.

8. The segments are stacked, and I compress this rectangle to make it more of a square. I also trim the sides to make them neat and even.

9. This square will be cut in half from corner to corner to make 2 triangles.

10. The 2 triangles are cut in half to make 4 triangles.

11.The pieces are arranged as shown in the above photo. Notice that the color bands are now diagonal. This square is reduced to a length of approximately 2”/5cm. Then it is reshaped to form a 3/4"/19mm x 1"/2.5cm rectangle.

12. Once my rectangle is made, I slice it from corner to corner, following the line where the light and dark colors meet. I scrape off any dark clay that remains on the light side (and vice versa) using my clay blade.

13. My 2 triangular pieces are cut in half as shown in the photo to make 4 triangles.

14. I stand up my triangles with the longest side on the bottom. Then I wrap each triangle (but not the bottom!) with a very thin (Atlas #6) sheet of blue clay.

15. Now the triangles are arranged as shown above to form a square, but are not pressed together. In the center is a small “tilted” square hole. Note that the unlined sides of the triangles face outward to form the sides of the square.

16. The square is now pulled apart, and a square log (I used the green clay) is inserted to fill in the center square hole, checking both ends of the cane to make sure it fills it completely.

17. I press the pieces of the cane together and make sure there are no gaps between the pieces. Then the cane is wrapped with a #6 sheet of blue clay. This cane will now be reduced to a ¾”/19mm square approximately 3”/7.6cm in length.

18. Behold ! , the finished cane !

19. Here I have taken a piece off the base cane, reduced it, and reassembled it to make a 9-patch square. Note that the little green center squares are all tilting in the same direction.

I realize the steps are a bit complicated. Most of the difficulty was in making a Skinner block with diagonal striping. If anyone out there has an easier technique to accomplish this, I would love to hear it. I did a search on the ‘net, but the only instructions I found for diagonal Skinner blends were those that resulted in a cane that shifts colors as you slice it. One example is Beth Kazze Curran’s “Rainbow in a Cane” lesson featured in the October 2008 issue of Polymer Cafe. And I wanted my diagonal blend to go all the way through the cane and not shift color.
Anyway, that’s it, folks ! Next time I will more careful in choosing a cane design based on mathematical principles, LOL !

Wow Dora! Great looking cane! It does look complicated. I can see why it took awhile to figure out. Funny… the stuff that looks simple on paper can be quite tricky in real life. Sure ended up looking cool. Very 3-D looking!

thanks, Cindy ! I thought the ‘dimensionalness’ showed up better when I reduced the cane to make the 9-patch square. Now that I know how to make this cane, I’d like to try it with colors that have more contrast. I’m thinking black and white with red for the center square…

Hi Kathleen ! Yes, I am indeed overdue to post (hanging head in shame).
I have just returned from a weekend clay retreat, (Klay Karma 2009)where I did a demo of my Plaid Cane. So I had spent most of last week preparing for the demo and packing all my clay stuff. The retreat was awesome. I spent the weekend with an enthusiastic and talent group of polymer clay artists, ate and clayed a lot, and slept very little. I came back Sunday night totally wiped out. On Monday, I received via Fed-Ex my shiny new laptop, a Toshiba Tecra A-10, and have since been moving my files from my old laptop. Of course, I have also been playing with my new toy, and adjusting to Microsoft Vista after 7 years of using Microsoft XP. Anyway, I fully intend to post a summary of my retreat experience and a photo or two. A dear friend of mine took photos of my demo, and she will e-mail them to me so I can post them. Hope to sit down and compose something in the next day or so ! Promise !